Sun-Dried Tomato Dishes

Are sun-dried tomatoes back in fashion? I never got into the craze for them that there was in the 70s, and since then I’d never used them in my own cooking or noticed them at dinner parties or on restaurant menus before last month. But twice recently I encountered sun-dried tomatoes at dinners, and both were good enough to induce me to make the dishes for myself.

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The first occasion was at the home of my friends Betty and Livio. With the aperitifs, there was a plate of canapés made from tiny taralli, each topped with a dab of mascarpone and a sun-dried cherry tomato. They made a good savory combination. Afterward, I asked Betty about them. She told me Livio made them, using taralli from Buon Italia, here in the Chelsea market, and dried pomodorini – cherry tomatoes – from Sicily, which he’d softened in olive oil. Important to use those little tomatoes, she said, rather than the more common big ones.

I went off to the market and was able to get all three ingredients there ­– mascarpone, taralli flavored with fennel, and imported sun-dried cherry tomatoes. I duly set up some of the pomodorini in olive oil for a few days and made the canapés for my next dinner party. No complications: just simple stacking of three good ingredients. They were very tasty tidbits; everyone liked them.

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My next encounter with sun-dried tomatoes was in a restaurant, where the pasta of the day was maccheroncini dressed with sun-dried tomato pesto, pancetta, and pistachios. It was a lively, interestingly different sauce. I had more pomodorini already softened in olive oil, and I always have pancetta, so all I had to acquire for this experiment were the pistachios.

To make the pesto I pureed about 5 ounces of the softened pomodorini with ¼ cup of canned Italian-style peeled tomatoes in a blender. I seasoned the paste with grated parmigiano, salt, freshly ground pepper, and a tiny pinch of sugar. Separately I minced ¾ ounce of pancetta and crisped it in a skillet with a little olive oil, then skinned and minced 24 pistachios.

For the pasta I had in the freezer some small tortellini that it was time to use, so I cooked enough for two portions. I tossed them with pesto (they needed less than half of it), all the pancetta and pistachios, and a scoop of the pasta cooking water to loosen the sauce a little.

That made quite a rich dish, which appreciated generous grindings of black pepper on the plates.

If I make it again, the only thing I’d change is to grind the pistachios rather than chop them. Though small, the nuggets were a little too intrusive in the mouth-feel of the sauce.

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There was a good deal of the pesto still left after that meal, but I wasn’t worried about its fate. Tom is an ingenious contriver of good things to eat from whatever he finds in the kitchen. This evening, he quickly defrosted a paratha in a skillet (we always keep these Indian flatbreads around for simple dinner appetizers), spread it with pesto, topped it with chopped olives, and baked it in the toaster oven. Voilà – a multicultural mock pizza!  The pesto loved the olives, and we enjoyed both.